Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are quantifiable measurements that reflect the critical success factors of an organization ranging from income that comes from return customers to percentage of customer calls answered in the first minute. Key Performance Indicators may also be used to measure performance in other types of organizations such as schools, social service organizations, and the like. Measures employed as KPI within an organization may include a variety of types such as revenue in currency, growth or decrease of a measure in percentage, actual values of a measurable quantity, and the like.
An average business user may need to visit several data systems before they are able to find the information (such as KPIs, aggregations, metric presentation, and the like) they need. High cost of data access may add overhead to the decision making process, driving up costs and frequency of decisions made on incomplete data and lower overall (Return On Investment) ROI on the data that is collected for the enterprise.
On the other hand, desktop visualization application user interfaces with limited functionality and presentation (e.g. “gadgets” or “widgets”) are becoming popular components of operating system desktops. For example, analog or digital clocks, weather presentations, news feeds, and the like are commonly found on many computer users' screens. These user interfaces provide a simple tool for the user to access selected information (e.g. traffic information for a selected area). Use of widgets or gadgets is expanding to numerous areas such as medical information (e.g. doctors can monitor a particular patient's vital information).